Operating System

Case Fan

Monitor

Keyboard

Details

Date Published

Feb. 23, 2016

Date Built

Feb. 20, 2016

CPU Clock Rate

4 GHz

CPU Temperature While Idle

23.0° C

GPU Core Clock Rate

1.266 GHz

Description

After my Lenovo Y510P died a milky death from my 20 month old, I decided no more laptops since my daughters would probably destroy it. My first thought was to build something under $1,000 but after browsing to see what's new out there, that budget didn't seem to cut it and I decided to build a Hex Core work machine with a "eh" GPU. Once I had everything planned and priced around $1200, I bit the bullet and made my order. Soon after ordering the parts did I find out about some compatibility issues with some of the parts and had to cancel my order (thank goodness). Hung out with family and friends that evening and talked about my plans and after a couple hours of peer pressure, I was persuaded to change directions and built this little monster.

Since I knew this build would blow my budget out of the ballpark, I had to carefully hunt for deals for each component. To save some money, I had originally intended to reuse my old Antec PSU and grab a couple old SSDs and a regular HDD, but after I ordered most of my parts I had the itch and I couldn't stop scratching! With the SeaSonic PSU going on sale, it felt like it was just meant to be.

Finally, everything came in by the end of the week and I was able to build it Saturday morning. This was a very intimidating build for me. I haven't put a computer together for nearly a decade and I've never had a water cooled system so I didn't know what to expect. I had first told my wife it would take me 2 hour since she had to watch the girls, but 2 hours turned into 8 very quickly. Luckily for me, I have a very understand wife (sort of). There was a couple times where I had to disassemble and reassemble but a majority of my time went into wire management. My end results surpassed my expectations and I am loving my new build.

Case

Beautiful fun looking case with just about everything you would want or need from a Mini ITX build. Corsair really makes some quality products. I wouldn't hesitate to buy any of their products in the future!

Power Supply

Can't say a bad thing about it. Was worried about the ribbon cables but in the end, it's exactly what I needed to make everything nice and tidy. The thing is freaking beautiful, if I were a Modular cable, I would make love to this PSU everyday!

Case Fan

Comments

great build! you can kind of tell you have pretty great cable managment but the fact you have all your pics black and white makes it hard to see that. how do you have your ssds and hdd set up? youre one of the only few people I've seen on here that have used a old laptop hdd on their pc build.

Thanks Ropota... The SSDs and HDD is in their allotted space provided by the case. I never even thought about hiding them to clean up the wiring! As far as storage, I just used whatever crap I could find laying around. I did purchase the PNY 240gb SSD since it was on sale for $59. One day I will replace them and add a M.2 drive, but for now, I have more then enough.

I will probably spend some more time cleaning up the wires since I'm sort of OCD. Sorry for the black and white photos, I just really digged them since it made it look sort of artsy fatsy and thought you all would too =D

Nice 2 380T builds back to back. This is definitely the hulk in white..... little til you piss it off with some over achieving program or game & whoa nelly grab ya blummers and hold on for dear life. The monster emerges and quickly pimp slaps some sense into whatever thought it was big & bad. LOL I think I have made it very clear how i feel about this build. So i'll just leave it right there ... LOL +1

Excellent build! Thanks for the first photo as I was curious what the I/O panel looked like hidden under the cover. A couple questions if you don't mind when you get a chance since I have the same case:

Why did you need to take that plastic cover off to expose the I/O panel?

Do you miss the larger fan, it looks cool! You mentioned you later replaced with a 140mm RGB LED in the front. Too bad they don't make a 200mm RGB LED fan or I would have bought that, I imagine you would have as well. I emailed Thermaltake and there are no plans for that size.

Lastly, since you originally asked about fans... take a look back at my build if you ever decide to use that m.2 slot on the back of your board for an SSD. The response time on these SSDs is crazy fast and worth it in my opinion. Especially with your build! You would need to verify that the orientation of that m.2 slot is in the same position as my board...

I opened everything to hide wires where ever I could. That's why i opened up that panel. I actually spent another day redoing the wires again because I just didn't like how I left it. I think I'm OCD.

The larger fan was cool, but just didn't fit without trimming it down. With me being OCD, I wanted someone that just fit right, so I went with the 140mm front. When I have a chance this weekend, I will take new photos and send you a link. I really dig the RGB lights throughout but notice that the controllers doesn't scroll through the lights at the same rate. Is there a way to change the rate that it changes? I have one controller for front and rear fan and another for the radiator fans.

Once I get a m.2 for a good price, I will make the leap. I think my purchase point for the samsung pro 256 m.2 would be maybe $130 haha.

Hi! I see now on 1, interesting. For your question on 2, no idea. That's unfortunate you are getting differing rates, I don't see a setting for that to get them in sync. I imagine someone found a solution for that by now as there has to be someone with more than 3 Riing RGB fans on a build. That Samsung is the one I would have bought but they came out just after I purchased mine. Have fun!

One more thought - is there a 4th location to plug in a 5 wire plug on your controller, on same side that goes to the motherboard? Not sure if that port is for another fan, but if it is, you could put all your fans on one controller and voila! Hope this helps, and that it doesn't lead to more hassle with wire management :).

-Did you have a molex or SATA for powering your 3-speed fan connector? The corsair build log showed that I should have a molex. I didn't see it on mine, but I think I do with yours. Is it because you swopped the front fan?
-Also, did the H100i GTX try to take over the same space as your 8-CPU plug? I got an H100i V2 and I can't get both the CPU plug and the cooler to fit.